Tesla Is Finally Putting Superchargers Where We Need Them Most

Tesla superchargers are going downtown. Elon Musk's electric car company quietly announced today that a program to put more chargers in city centers will start soon in Boston and Chicago. The idea is to put EV chargers within reach of urban dwellers "without immediate access to home or workplace charging."

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Supercharger stations in urban areas will be installed in convenient locations, including supermarkets, shopping centers and downtown districts, so it's easy for customers to charge their car in the time it takes to grocery shop or run errands. They also have the same pricing as our existing Superchargers, which is far cheaper than the cost of gasoline.

This is a big deal. It could be one of the most important factors that would allow the long-promised electric car revolution to be realized.

I have reservation on a Tesla Model 3. I would very much like to own one. But New York City is a difficult place to own a car, and doubly so for an electric vehicle. Jalopnik explains why in a great post, but the basic fact is this: For all the hullabaloo about electric cars being marketed to city people as the future of urban mobility, it's a hell of a lot easier to own a Tesla if you have a garage in the suburbs where you can stick a charger than it is if you live in the heart of the city with no guarantee you'll be able to park anywhere near your home or apartment.

Up until now, Tesla's superchargers have been installed along highways for people trying to drive long distances on electric power, or at hotels and restaurants for people who need a little charge away from home. For EVs to make any actual sense as a city vehicle, you need ample places to charge a car in the heart of a metro area, and not just those two stalls in the parking lot with a charging hookup.

In Tesla's case, it's about time. The very first Model 3s are just now going out to buyers, but the company took hundreds of thousands of reservations before there was enough charging infrastructure to suddenly support hundreds of thousands of EVs on American roads.

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And it's not all about Musk's company. This summer the world's big automakers have been playing a weird, sudden game of electrical oneupmanship, with Volvo and Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz and BMW and others promising to electrify their entire lineups within the next five years or so. Many of those cars will be ordinary hybrids that don't require charging hookups, but a real push into pure EV will require a whole lot more chargers to be built basically everywhere in America.

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